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ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI, Polish poet, fiction writer, and
essayist, has lived in France since 1982. He was born in richly multicultural Lwów (today
in Ukraine) in 1945 and spent his youth first in Silesia and then in Cracow, where he
graduated from the Jagiellonian University. He published his first volume of poetry in
1972 and a collection of essays (with Julian Kornhauser) in 1974 which amounted to a
literary manifesto. He has been considered a representative of the `Generation of
68 or New Wave (Nowa fala): he was an active dissident during the seventies,
and some of his poems and essays deal with political issues. On emigration from Poland in
1982, he settled in Paris; since 1988 he has served as Visiting Associate Professor of
English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, where he teaches
graduate classes in poetry and literature every spring semester. He won a fellowship from
the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm (1979), the Kurt Tucholsky Prize (Stockholm), a Prix de la
Liberté (Paris), and a Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry (1992). He is currently co-editor
of Zeszyty literackie (Literary Review), published in Paris. His poems and essays
have been translated into many European languages and widely published, including in the Times
Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris
Review, and the Partisan Review. Two translations of his work published in
1997, an anthology of essays and a collection of his poetry, were recently reviewed in
March 23rd (1998) issue of The New Republic.

Probably I am an ordinary middle-class
believer in individual rights, the word
"freedom" is simple to me, it doesn't mean
the freedom of any class in particular.
Politically naive, with an average
education (brief moments of clear vision
are its main nourishment), I remember
the blazing appeal of that fire which parches
the lips of the thirsty crowd and burns
books and chars the skin of cities. I used to sing
those songs and I know how great it is
to run with others; later, by myself,
with the taste of ashes in my mouth, I heard
the lie's ironic voice and the choir screaming
and when I touched my head I could feel
the arched skull of my country, its hard edge. Translated by Renata Gorczynski

Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves
Knowledge grows slowly like a wisdom tooth
The stature of a man is still notched
high up on a white door
From far off, the joyful voice of a trumpet
and of a song rolled up like a cat
What passes doesn't fall into a void
A stoker is still feeding coal into the fire
Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
On a hard dry substance
you have to engrave the truth Translated by Renata Gorczynski